Media Center: Crimson Football - Harvard-Yale: "The Game"

Pete Varney's two-point conversion catch sealed one of the greatest all-time games in sports history as Harvard "defeated" Yale, 29-29, in 1968

All About The Game

132 And Counting
With its 132nd playing this year, the Harvard-Yale rivalry is the
third-most played series in college football. Only Lehigh-Lafayette
(150meetings) and Princeton-Yale (137) have played more often.

Instant Classic
Harvard’s 30-24 triple-overtime win in 2005 stands as the
longest football game in Ivy League history.

The Last In Line
In every formal season since 1898, Harvard’s final opponent
has been Yale. There is only one exception, as the 1920 campaign
was completed with a 7-6 Rose Bowl victory over Oregon. Harvard got
there with a 10-3 decision over the Elis.

Double Duty
Wayne Johnson, Jr. (Harvard A.B. ’44, L.L. B. 48) is the
only player to have lettered for both Harvard and Yale in football.
In 1942, Johnson played fullback for the Crimson and, against Yale,
dropped a critical pass in a 7-3 defeat to the Elis. Soon after, he
joined the Marines, where the Corps assigned him to Yale in a
program that permitted undergrads to continue their studies while
preparing for a commission. He played just one game for the Elis
before an injury ended his season but was still awarded a
letter.

Home Field Advantage?
Harvard is 26-22-1 at the Yale Bowl; Harvard is 26-25-3 at Harvard
Stadium. The visiting team has won 16 of the last 27 Games.

On The Charts
The Harvard-Yale rivalry was tabbed as the sixth-best rivalry in
college athletics, according to Sports Illustrated On Campus.
Alabama-Auburn was first on the list, followed by Duke-North
Carolina, UCLA-USC, Army-Navy and Cal-Stanford.

It was the first rivalry in all of college athletics. Today, 159
years later, Harvard-Yale still stands as one of the best series in
the world of sports.

These schools are familiar with being first and foremost. Yale
fields 35 varsity sports and Harvard has 42, the most of any
Division I school in the nation.

Harvard teams have won 140 national titles in sports ranging from
crew to football and lacrosse to fencing. Yale has 105 national
titles to its credit, including several in football, swimming and
diving, squash and golf.

The schools have combined to capture 497 Ivy League
championships since the circuit was formed in 1956 and combined to
win 12 League titles in 2011-12 with Harvard claiming 10 of
them.

Former Harvard football coach Joe Restic, who guided the Crimson
for 23 seasons until his retirement in 1993, quipped, “Each
year, we’re friends for 364 days and rivals for just
one.” While he was primarily assessing his relationship with
his legendary Yale counterpart Carm Cozza, those words apply across
the board.

Harvard-Yale is as much a debate as it is a feud. Think
Lincoln-Douglas, not Hatfield-McCoy, though it should be noted the
two schools jousted some eight years before the 1860 presidential
candidates squared off on opposite podiums. In politics, the last
four U.S. presidents have earned a combined five degrees from
Harvard and Yale. Twelve presidents have earned a combined 13
degrees from Harvard and Yale. In all, a high of five U.S.
presidents did their undergrad at Harvard (compared to three at
Yale), and three earned graduate degrees at Harvard (compared to
two at Yale).

Yet a rivalry doesn’t grow in stature by accident. Both
schools have played major roles in advancing and shaping college
athletics.

In 1843, Yale started the first college boat club in America; in
1884, Eli runner Charles Sherrill first demonstrated the four-point
crouch for sprinters; in 1890, Yale introduced
“cheerleaders” at a football game, a first in college
sports; in 1896, the first intercollegiate ice hockey game featured
Yale and Johns Hopkins (a 2-2 tie); and in 1897, Yale men’s
basketball played in the country’s first 5-on-5 game.

Harvard, founded in 1636, has the distinction of being the
nation’s first college. Among its athletics firsts are: in
1877, the first baseball catcher’s mask was used in a Harvard
game, a fencing mask adapted by inventor Fred Thayer for Alexander
Tyng; in 1896, Harvard freshman James B. Connolly became the first
gold medalist of the modern Olympics (winning the hop, hop and
jump); in 1901, women’s field hockey was first introduced to
America on the Harvard (Radcliffe) campus; in 1903, Harvard
Stadium, the nation’s oldest football stadium, was built; in
1905, Harvard played in the first intercollegiate soccer match
(falling to Haverford, 1-0); and in 1947, Chester Pierce ’48
became the first African-American footballer to play against a
white college in the South when the Crimson met the University of
Virginia in Charlottesville.

The football rivalry, however, is arguably the most revered.
Harvard and Yale have met 128 times on the gridiron since November
13, 1875 in New Haven (a 4-0 Harvard win). The series is the
third-most-played in college football history and is now referenced
around the country simply as “The Game.” And, while
combining for 18 national championships and 28 Ivy crowns, the
annual contest still attracts sellout crowds to Cambridge and over
50,000 fans to the Bowl in New Haven.

Yet it was football that nearly splintered relations between these
two schools. In 1894, following a game known as the
“Springfield Massacre” when seven players were carried
off the field in “dying condition,” Harvard and Yale
broke off relations. Each blamed the other for the contest’s
unprecedented brutality.

Historian George Sullivan wrote, “So savage was combat on a
neutral Springfield gridiron … that newspapers printed a
casualty summary similar to those listing victims of a disaster.
The game’s violence appalled the world and ignited a national
uproar about football ferocity-outrage that threatened the
sport’s future.”

And the rivalry’s as well. The schools didn’t meet in
football for two seasons, while the baseball, crew and track and
field teams avoided each other for one. But the allure of
competition was too great, and by 1897, the schools were back at
it. Harvard’s student newspaper, The Crimson, welcomed the
resumption: “forgetting the past and resolving a generous
open-handed rivalry for the future, Harvard joins hands with Yale
and welcomes her heartily and joyfully to her old place as
Harvard’s nearest and dearest foe.”

By 1898, the football game had relocated to its now-familiar and
permanent perch as the final one on each school’s docket.

Football has also generated the most lore. The notorious flying
wedge, the brainchild of Harvard assistant Lorin Deland, was
introduced in the 1892 H-Y game. Harvard coach Percy Haughton is
purported to have choked a bulldog to fire up his troops for the
1908 game (although just a story, whatever he did worked as the
Crimson won 4-0). In 1923, Yale’s T.A.D. Jones told his
players, “Gentlemen, you are now going out to play football
against Harvard. Never again in your whole life will you do
anything so important.”

The 1930s had the majestic Barry Wood (Harvard)-Albie Booth (Yale)
battles. It was also the era when a Harvard illustrator drew a game
program cover of a pilgrim unceremoniously sitting on Yale’s
famous captain’s fence. Some Eli alums were so outraged that
a suspension of the series was briefly discussed, before cooler
heads prevailed (Harvard’s 1995 football captain, Justin
Frantz, became the first Harvard athlete invited to sit on the
fence, and his picture with Yale captain Tony Mazurkiewicz graced
that year’s program).

The 1952 Game is remembered for the “ultimate insult”
when Yale’s football team manager, Charlie Yeager, was put in
the game to catch a two-point conversion that culminated a 41-14
Eli blowout at the Stadium. More than half a century later, that
one still hurts.

Harvard’s 1968 “win” over Yale is still rated as
one of the top college football games ever played. Both schools
entered The Game owning identical 8-0 records, but Yale appeared
well on its way to victory and a perfect season as thousands
silently streamed out of The Stadium as the clock counted down.
That’s before Harvard miraculously scored 16 points in the
final 42 seconds to “defeat” the Elis, 29-29. An extra
edition of The Crimson, issued just five minutes after the final
gun, carried the now famous headline, “HARVARD BEATS YALE,
29-29.” Some joke that Harvard’s greatest
“win” was actually a tie, but none of those people were
wearing Crimson that afternoon.

Another memorable day came in 1982, when a group of MIT frat boys
exploded a balloon out of the Stadium turf — at midfield, no
less — during Harvard’s 45-7 triumph.

More recently, Yale rallied to win thrillers in 1998, 1999 and
2000. Harvard has had the edge through the early 21st century,
however, as the Crimson won an unprecedented five straight against
the Bulldogs (2001-05) and nine of 10 from 2001-10 with 2006 being
the lone exception. The 2005 Game immediately joined the ranks of
the greatest in the history of the series as the Crimson rallied to
force overtime before prevailing, 30-24, in the third extra session
of the longest game in Ivy League history.

Another memorable moment was written in 2007 when the teams met at
Yale Bowl in front of 57,248 fans with the Bulldogs ranked 11th and
Harvard 25th. The teams were undefeated in Ivy play, marking just
the fourth time in league history that two unbeaten teams had met
in the final game of the year.

For Yale, a victory would also mean its first 10-0 season in 47
years and its first outright league championship in 26. Instead,
the previously 9-0 Bulldogs were whipped, 37-6, marking
Harvard’s most lopsided victory at the Yale Bowl since a 35-6
win in 1959. Had it not been for a late punt return for a touchdown
by the Eli’s, Harvard would have had its most uneven victory
since a 36-0 victory in 1914.

In 2009, Harvard limited Yale to just 90 yards of offense on a
bone-chilling day at the Stadium as Harvard, which finished ranked
14th nationally, cruised to a 10-0 win. The victory gave Harvard
its second-straight Ivy championship and would mark the final game
for Yale coach Jack Siedlecki.

In 2010, Harvard again came away victorious, winning its fifth
straight game at Yale Bowl by scoring two late touchdowns in a
14-10 thriller. With Yale leading 10-0 late in the fourth, Harvard
drove 76 yards in just 1:50 on six plays to make it a 10-7 game.
Yale got the ball back and converted a pair of first downs to move
the ball to its own 37 as the clock crept inside the four-minute
mark. Yale eventually found itself in fourth down with 22 yards to
go from its 25 yard line at 2:40 on the clock. With the league's
best punter in Tom Mante waiting to boot it down field, new Yale
coach Tom Williams instead called an improbable reverse run on a
fake punt. John Powers evaded a would-be tackler in the backfield
and moved behind a wall of blockers along the left sideline but
Collin Zych blew up a double team block and Anthony Spadafino
stopped Powers seven yards shy, giving Harvard the ball at Yale's
40 yard line with 2:25 as a stunned Yale crowd looked on. It took
Harvard just three plays to devastate the crowd again as Chris
Lorditch cut across the middle of the field and then swiftly past
two defenders up the seam as QB Collier Winters lofted a perfect
pass over the inside coverage. Thirty two yards later, Harvard
suddenly led 14-10 before linebacker Jon Takamura finished the
victory with an interception.

In 2011, Harvard scored 45 unanswered points to win, 45-7, and
mark its highest output against Yale since an identical score of
45-7 at Cambridge in 1982.

Harvard's offensive might was on display from the beginning as
the Crimson ran up 357 yards and 20 first downs in the opening half
alone. All told, Harvard had 506 yards of offense as the Crimson
set a single-season scoring record with 374 points. Defensively,
Harvard sacked Yale's Jeff Witt four times, intercepted him three
times and also forced a fumble.

In the 2012 edition, Treavor Scales dashed for 177 yards on 19
carries, while quarterback Colton Chapple threw for 209 yards and
two touchdowns, while also adding 128 yards on the ground, as the
Crimson knocked off the Elis, 34-24, for the sixth straight
season.

Paul Stanton, Jr. tied the Harvard record for touchdowns in The
Game with four, helping the Crimson top Yale, 34-7, for the seventh
straight season in 2013. Stanton had two scores on the ground and
two as a receiver in the 130th Playing of The Game in New
Haven.

In the 2014 edition of The Game, Harvard continued to roll, as
Conner Hempel ’15 connected with Andrew Fischer ’16 for
a 35-yard TD pass with 55 seconds remaining, lifting the Crimson to
a 31-24 victory at Harvard Stadium. Fischer finished with with 264
all-purpose yards, including 149 receving yards. With the win, the
Crimson capped a 10-0 season, claimed the team’s 16th Ivy
crown and defeated Yale for a program-record eighth-straight
occasion.